It has long been known to be desirable to keep a beverage contained in a pitcher cool, without diluting such beverage by the addition of ice. Although the addition of ice to a beverage such as ice tea may be satisfactory, the addition of ice to a beverage such as beer would usually be highly undesirable.
The 1869 patent to Pietsch, U.S. Pat. No. 93,001 entitled "Pitcher" is seen to represent an effort to keep the contents of a pitcher cool by providing an ice chamber J in which chunks of ice may be maintained. Although this arrangement is generally functional, it involves a considerable part of the interior of the pitcher being utilized for containing the ice, with the result that the volume available in the pitcher for the beverage is relatively small.
The Mock U.S. Pat. No. 1,771,186 entitled "Serving Element for Electric Refrigerators" was an improvement over Pietsch in that it involved the use of a serving element having double walls, with the space between the walls being partially but not completely filled with water. This patentee envisions his serving element placed upside down in an electric refrigerator, for example, such that ice forms in the space between the walls. As a consequence of this arrangement, when a beverage is thereafter poured into the space defined by the inner chamber, the ice between the walls commences to melt and to chill the beverage. This arrangement is only good for one serving of beverage, with the serving container having to be cycled through another cooling process in a refrigerator before it would be suitable for chilling another container of beverage.
The Kellogg U.S. Pat. No. 2,030,005 entitled "Container and Cooling Means Therefor" teaches the use of a type of keg or barrel utilized for beer or other malt beverages, with an arrangement utilized such that the contents of the keg or barrel are kept at a low temperature.
The keg or barrel has inner and outer walls held in spaced relation by tubes 15, which serve both as a refrigerating as well as a spacing means. Carbon dioxide is utilized as a gaseous refrigerant. It is obvious that the Kellogg teaching would not be pertinent to the cooling of a pitcher, such as a pitcher utilized for containing beer, but rather would be limited to a comparatively large scale cooling arrangement.
Other patentees such as the Smith U.S. Pat. No. 2,526,165, the Paquin U.S. Pat. No. 3,413,820 and the Crowell U.S. Pat. No. 4,691,664 have taught the use of placing cooling means in a receptacle, but in none of these instances was the arrangement such that a pitcher of beer, for example, could be maintained at a desirably low temperature.
It was in an effort to overcome the limitations of these and other such devices that the present invention was designed.